There was no murder weapon. Yes, Noris was killed and Sherl seriously wounded by bullets probably fired by a lever-action .357 Marlin, a rifle Lawson admitted lifting from his father's gun cabinet in La Pine. But that rifle had disappeared, tragically or conveniently stolen, Lawson said, from his pickup.

There was no trace of Lawson's DNA in the Hildes' trailer.

No Lawson fingerprints.

No blood evidence. Although David Brewer, former chief judge of Oregon's Court of Appeals, makes curious note of a "bloody shoe-print" at the scene in his review of Lawson's conviction, no blood was found on Lawson's Rockports or the floorboards of his truck.

All Chris Merrifield, the chief investigator, had, then, was Sherl Hilde's painful recollections of watching her husband die and her ensuing conversation with his killer.

Unfortunately for Merrifield, those recollections were noticeably inconsistent, especially right after the traumatic shooting.

As she was transported to St. Charles Medical Center in Bend, Hilde told EMTs the shooter was the man she and her husband met earlier that day when the Hildes discovered Lawson sleeping in their elk camp tent.

Michi Ann Sato, an emergency room nurse at St. Charles, testified, however, that Hilde told hospital staff, "They let me live because I didn't see their faces."

"She said that a lot," Sato added.

At one point on her Life-Flight to Bend, Hilde also insisted the helicopter pilot was the shooter.

As Court of Appeals Judge Timothy Sercombe wrote in 2010, "Although Sherl provided a description of the perpetrator on multiple occasions relatively soon after the crimes, the generalness and variations of her descriptions counsel against reliability ... None of these descriptions were of specific features, such as eye, hair, or skin color, much less distinguishing characteristics, such as scars or tattoos."

Merrifield apparently thought, however, that Lawson was the shooter. His job was to help Hilde convince a jury that was the case.

Merrifield did not return calls, which isn't all that surprising. When the Oregon Supreme Court reviews a conviction like Lawson's, almost everyone involved is similarly cautious.

But the 4,000-page trial transcript and the appellate decision lay out clearly what Merrifield did and -- in the opinion of the jury and the Court of Appeals -- did wrong before Hilde took the stand.

So does Tami Chartraw, a former St. Charles employee.

Merrifield's interest in Lawson was understandable, I suppose. Although Lawson had no criminal record beyond a DUI, he was in the vicinity with a .357 Marlin, a rifle he claimed vanished from his unlocked truck before he bumped into the Hildes at Briggs Camp. His pickup was spotted by a deputy patrolman by Stump Lake.

But Lawson denied involvement, and Hilde, recovering from her grievous wounds, struggled to firm up one of her random accusations, that Lawson was her husband's killer.

Chartraw, the hospital's HIPAA privacy officer, was in Hilde's room at St. Charles when Merrifield and fellow deputies arrived seeking that confirmation. Her job was to ensure that Sherl was feeling well enough to answer questions.

"I remember a couple of things," Chartraw testified at Lawson's aggravated murder trial in November 2005. "She mentioned that it was very dark; that there was a pillow over her face and she couldn't see the attacker, both because the pillow was over her face and it was very dark."

When Chartraw was asked by Lawson's attorney, Peter Fahy, whether she ever heard Hilde indicate that the man she and Noris met at the camp was the man who shot her, Chartraw replied, "No, she did not."

In the month after the shooting, Hilde was twice unable to identify Lawson in a photo throw-down conducted by Merrifield at St. Charles.

The second throw-down occurred during a crucial four-hour interview at the hospital with Hilde on Sept. 22, 2003. Merrifield took no notes during that interview and acknowledges that he and Deputy Bill Bradburn made no mention of the throw-down in their report.

"It was an oversight," Merrifield testified. "I made a mistake."

That was the interview, by the way, in which Merrifield says that Sherl Hilde finally identified Lawson as the shooter.

Chartraw didn't hear that dramatic identification. Why? Because Merrifield demanded she leave the room before he asked Hilde some especially personal questions.

"I thought it was strange," Chartraw said, "on the interview on the 22nd that they prayed with her. I haven't seen police open an interview with prayer before. That and being asked to leave."

(The Douglas County prosecutor, I hasten to add, promptly filed perjury charges against Chartraw in 2007 after she testified in the Lawson case. "A vindictive prosecution," Fahy said. Presiding Judge Joan Seitz apparently agreed: "Not even close," she said after finding Chartraw not guilty.)

In the end, how did Merrifield finally lock down Hilde's identification of Lawson as the man who shot and killed her husband, put a cushion over her head and demanded the keys to the Hildes' truck?

Forget those messy throw-downs. He showed Sherl an individual photo of Lawson wearing a baseball cap -- Sherl remembered such a cap from the morning encounter -- then escorted her to a pretrial hearing so she could get a better look at the defendant, cuffs and all.

As Brewer wrote in the appellate decision affirming Lawson's conviction, "The state does not dispute on appeal that the trial court correctly concluded that those actions were unduly suggestive. We conclude that the state's concession on that issue is well-taken."

But from Lawson's perspective, the damage was done. When Sherl Hilde finally testified in his aggravated murder trial, 27 months after her husband's death, she was more convinced than ever that Lawson had returned to Briggs Camp in the dead of that August night and murdered the man she loved.

Her testimony was understandably persuasive for the jury.

Eyewitness testimony invariably is.

That's why Lawson was sentenced to life in prison. And that's why Oregon's Supreme Court finally decided to take a second look at the conviction.